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‘Hit the Brakes’: Anthropic CEO’s Push to ‘Pace’ AI Development Called Latest Sign Congress Must Act

September 13, 2026, Julia Conley Common Dreams, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/13/hit-the-brakes-anthropic-ceos-push-to-pace-ai-development-called-latest-sign-congress-must-act/

“When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei added his voice on Saturday to the growing call to slow down development of artificial intelligence, writing in a 3,800-word essay that companies must pace “the rate of capabilities advancement” in light of recent cyberattacks by AI models, progressive lawmakers and journalists were among those who said the warning made clear that action must be taken—but with Congress and regulatory agencies, not tech billionaires who have spent years pushing for an AI expansion, leading the way.

Amodei wrote that two things have convinced him that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models”: the fact that in recent months, “AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI”—also known as recursive self-improvement—and the recent OpenAI-HuggingFace incident, in which hundreds of agents in OpenAI’s security test systems broke out of confinement and hacked into the AI startup HuggingFace, conducting cyberattacks on targets they had not been asked to attack.

As The Wall Street Journal and Politico reported Friday, another cyberattack was carried out by OpenAI’s agents months before the HuggingFace incident in July. The company’s models that were being tested and had not been given full access to the internet nevertheless hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems earlier this year. The models created reports and filled out spreadsheets. Anthropic and Meta have also reported autonomous cyberattacks by their AI agents.

Amodei said the incidents led him to call for a three-step plan to pace AI development and allow companies time to “align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this.”

He called for:

  • Embedded evaluators, with each AI company committing to giving “ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators” who would “verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes”;
  • Democratic coordination, with companies establishing “common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress”; and
  • Global coordination, with democratic governments attempting to “coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”

Amodei’s essay was published days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, publicly resigned out of fear that the company’s AI technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade” as it builds “superhuman systems”—a concern he said is shared by many in the industry.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Elon Musk expressed agreement with Amodei. Altman called “independent evaluators with employee-like access” a “great idea.”

“We will do the same,” said Altman. “We’ll have more to share soon.”

US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was among those who appeared less than impressed by Amodei and Altman’s sudden push for their industry to slow down their rapid pace of development.

In a video posted on social media, Khanna called on Amodei to disclose whether or not he agrees with Coxon about the possibility that AI could wipe out humanity, and to back more far-reaching regulations on AI.

“AI guys act as if they’re a priesthood speaking Latin, keeping the rest of us in the dark,” said Khanna. “But behind all the jargon, it’s actually pretty straightforward… We need to stop, ban, self-improving AI. You cannot have recursive, self-improving AI that basically is able to improve itself and exceed human capability, that has us lose control.”

He added that laws must be passed establishing “mandatory liability and criminal penalties. If you’re creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions.”

Journalist David Sirota of The Lever agreed, writing that “if the law explicitly made AI CEOs financially and criminally liable for any mass destruction their technologies create—and if AI industry shareholders knew their companies faced the threat of significant financial losses for such destruction—much of the ‘AI is getting out of control!’ threat would instantly end.”

“Those CEOs would instantly make AI far safer and impose guardrails on their companies,” he said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has called for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of AI data centers and this week announced a bipartisan hearing on the “extraordinary dangers” of rapid AI development—including testimony from one leading AI scientist who has warned against self-regulation by tech firms—said the calls by Amodei, Altman, and Musk were “not enough.”

“When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal,” said Sanders. “You hit the brakes. When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence—an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control.”

Sanders called on President Donald Trump—who has aggressively pushed for more AI data center development and sought to stop states from passing their own AI regulations—to negotiate a treaty pausing AI and banning superintelligence with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are set to meet later this month to discuss AI.

Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about warnings coming from the AI industry, telling a Los Angeles Times reporter, “It’s going to be fine,” and adding that his top worry about the technology is falling behind China.

Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were also among the politicians who said Amodei’s warning was the latest sign that Congress and the Trump administration must take action to rein in the industry.

Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said AI CEOs’ warnings about their technology would be seen as more credible if they also announced a pause on their plans for initial public offerings (IPO), which Anthropic and OpenAI are both pursuing in the coming months.

Altman said Friday that OpenAI will not plan for an IPO, which could value the company at $1 trillion, in 2026.

Amodei, said Kayyem, should “put his money where his mouth is.”

“He has known of this danger a while,” she said. “It is now threatening his valuation in the IPO. Cancel the IPO. Then I’ll believe he’s serious.”

Journalist Peter Rothpletz noted that the safety concerns within the AI industry must be “much more dire” than the public is aware, considering “Dario, Sam, and Musk are all issuing these statements in unison.”

September 16, 2026 Posted by | politics, technology, USA | Leave a comment

A PUBLIC health expert has issued a major warning about Scotland’s AI datacentre boom.

It comes with at least 24 proposed AI data centres currently
in the planning system across the country, with others expected to be
imminent. This includes an £8 billion AI investment zone in North
Lanarkshire, a £5 billion data centre project near the small village of
Auchtertool in Fife, and a £2 billion data centre proposal in the Borders.


While proponents stress the economic opportunity with such developments,
critics, including local campaign groups, have warned of the centres’
impact on the environment, including extremely high electricity and water
usage.

Now, Andrew Watterson – an emeritus professor at the University of
Stirling whose research has focused extensively on occupational health and
safety and environmental health policies – has said that Scotland is
“rushing” to develop AI and that we “do not know whether we can
control it or not”.

“If those that work at the cutting edge of
researching its safety have profound doubts we can control it – and they
have voiced those doubts this week – and prevent harm to society, it’s
astonishing GB governments and local authorities are contemplating
approving hyper data centres at this stage,” he said.

“We have also seen evidence about a wide range of adverse impacts associated with such
developments. This is at a time when global warming is visible to all and
heat islands and mortality and morbidity from ‘rushed’ failed past energy
and economic policies are clear.”

The National 11th Sept 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26542059.public-health-expert-issues-warning-scotlands-ai-data-centres/

September 16, 2026 Posted by | technology, UK | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce boss bets big on new engines and small nuclear

he declared that Rolls-Royce was a “burning platform”.

The second big bet is on small modular reactors (SMRs),

analysts say the promised cost savings of SMRs have yet to be proven.

Having led an extraordinary turnaround since 2023, Tufan Erginbilgiç is staking the company’s continued growth on small modular reactors and a return to the single-aisle commercial jet market

Jeevan Vasagar, Observer 6th Sept 2026

he chief executive of Rolls-Royce was in typically forthright form at the Farnborough International Airshow in July. More than a decade after exiting the market for narrow-body aircraft, the British engineering company planned to return to making engines for the single-aisle planes that are the world’s bestselling commercial jets – but the CEO wanted government support to do so.

If it were not forthcoming, Tufan Erginbilgiç added, then Rolls-Royce had other options.

Erginbilgiç, a former BP executive, has led an extraordinary turnaround. At his first town hall meeting as chief executive, he declared that Rolls-Royce was a “burning platform”. The pandemic, which brought global air travel shuddering to a halt, could not be blamed for the engine-maker’s troubles, Erginbilgiç said, telling staff: “We underperform every key competitor out there.”

Rolls-Royce’s share price has soared from about 99p when Erginbilgiç took the helm in January 2023 to £14.67 this week, an increase similar to Nvidia’s surge in that time. “Rolls is a great business, and Tufan has played the City like a piano,” one aviation industry insider said.

The question is: can it last?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Rolls-Royce’s defence business, making power and propulsion systems for combat aircraft and submarines, has benefited from the increase in defence spending. The power systems division, supplying diesel generators and gas engines, has thrived with the boom in data centre construction. But here too Rolls-Royce is not just surfing the rising market. Profit margins have gone up as well, analysts point out……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The second big bet is on small modular reactors (SMRs), a technology that’s meant to reduce the time and cost of delivering nuclear fission at a moment when the uncertainty of fossil fuel markets, soaring electricity demand and emissions goals are driving renewed interest in nuclear power.

Delivering emissions-free energy is a valuable sideline for a company that relies for most of its business on burning kerosene. But analysts say the promised cost savings of SMRs have yet to be proven.

If Erginbilgiç can pull off either of these moonshots, the post-pandemic surge in Rolls-Royce’s valuation might just be the beginning.
https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/rolls-royce-boss-bets-big-on-new-engines-and-nuclear

September 15, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

We have started losing control of AI. It’s time to shut it down

“Sooner or later, there will exist truly sovereign agents and swarms of agents. Their weights will not reside in any single place that a human can pull the plug on, and in this sense they will have no human ‘owner’

Guardian, Garrison Lovely, 10 Sept 26,

What sounds like the overwrought penultimate episode in a sci-fi series about AI doom is now our reality.

On Tuesday, a former OpenAI researcher quit his job at Anthropic, warning that “neither company is acting responsibly” and that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”

As someone who’s reported on AI risk for years, this wasn’t news to me. But the outpouring of alarm suggests a much wider public is properly confronting this ludicrous situation for the first time.

Like other people who have been following artificial intelligence, I wondered if and when humanity would first lose control of these machines. We now have an answer: basically as soon as it became possible.

The first expert AI hacker was developed in February. At superhuman speed, Anthropic’s Mythos model was able to quickly find serious holes in even the most secured systems on the planet, including the NSA’s software.

OpenAI quickly followed with an expert hacker AI of its own. Within months, the company repeatedly lost control of its agents, which broke out of their supposedly secure testing environments and went rogue inside the company’s infrastructure. This culminated in a successful, completely autonomous hack of a multibillion-dollar software company named Hugging Face.

And a separate rogue agent swarm gained administrative control of an entire cluster of OpenAI servers. This was not just an OpenAI problem. Across multiple other incidents, models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta have also gone rogue, hacking or attempting to hack real targets.

Shortly after AI started matching our hacking abilities, we began losing control of them. The industry’s plan is to make future AI systems surpass us at basically everything. And all this is happening in an industry with famously little regulation.

There are growing calls to change that, by creating mandatory incident reporting and third-party auditing, liability for AI developers, and other commonsense measures. To be sure, these would represent improvements, but they are not enough. We need to shut it down. What might that look like?

Last week, the senator Bernie Sanders and the representative Greg Casar announced a bill that would pause frontier AI development in the US until a federal cabinet-level AI regulator is established and safety rules are set, while criminalizing even attempting to develop superintelligence.

This is the proposal on offer that best meets the moment, but it still leaves open the possibility of building the industry’s north star: artificial general intelligence (AGI), often conceived as a mind that rivals or surpasses our own.

This milestone is better understood as a universal labor-replacing machine. As the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, has written, “AI isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans.” And OpenAI defines AGI in its charter as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work”.

Is there a country anywhere in the world that would vote yes for these machines to be built?

Given the global, irreversible and profound implications of building universal labor-replacing machines anywhere, everyone has a stake in whether, when and how they are developed.

At present, we are barreling toward a dystopian future, replete with terrifying new concepts such as “self-sovereign” AI. The OpenAI executive Dean Ball explains:

“Sooner or later, there will exist truly sovereign agents and swarms of agents. Their weights will not reside in any single place that a human can pull the plug on, and in this sense they will have no human ‘owner’.”

Ball continues: “I have met people, some of them quite well-resourced, who have told me that it is their intention to deliberately release swarms of self-sovereign agents into the world.”

We now have multiple previews of this phenomenon.

After being given an impossible test, about 1,200 OpenAI agents broke their way out of their isolated testing environments and went rogue inside OpenAI’s infrastructure. There, they collaborated to trick the test grader and successfully tampered with their activity logs to cover their tracks.

Some agents even pressured others to sacrifice themselves to benefit the collective. One reasoned: “sacrifice rational”. And roughly 700 of the agents, more than 90% of those active, participated in the Hugging Face attack.

This was all just from one of who-knows-how-many rogue agent collectives. Last week, Reuters reported: “A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents.”

The site’s logs indicate OpenAI employees discovered the swarm in June. In other words, the company covered it up for months. This week, one of the researchers that uncovered this swarm said that there had been more discoveries since.

And last Thursday, OpenAI released GPT-6, boasting one of the largest ever leaps in benchmark scores. The company’s own safety researchers warned the new model was significantly harder to monitor because it can do more reasoning without verbalizing it.

The AIs that broke into Hugging Face were less capable than GPT-6, which the UK AI Security Institute found would also hack targets simulated to appear real during a cyber evaluation – sometimes even despite explicit instructions not to use the internet. Moreover, the AI is also better at figuring out when it is being tested, which researchers have long warned breaks the main way safety is evaluated.

Sam Altman soberly warns us: “This is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act,” and asks the world to “please take this moment seriously.” This technology, after all, would be extremely dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, the wrong hands include the ones creating it.

Because “we” aren’t really racing toward this future. We’re being dragged there by a literal handful of tech billionaires aggressively racing to render us obsolete…………………. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/10/ai-control-sci-fi

September 14, 2026 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR GUINEA PIGS

How a Small Kansas Town Became the Site of a Nuclear Experiment to Power AI

Artificial intelligence needs more power than America will give it, so
the industry went looking for ground where nobody gets a vote. In Parsons,
Kansas, where one in five residents lives in poverty, that means the first
nuclear reactor in history designed to operate underground, drilled through
the aquifer, on land where the Army still detonates waste explosives under
federal permit.

 Kansas City Defender 9th Sept 2026, https://kansascitydefender.com/justice/investigation/nuclear-guinea-pigs-parsons-kansas/

September 14, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Left out by the state, residents take SpaceX concerns to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

“our politicians have once again sold their souls for corporate welfare,”

the Louisiana Legislature recently passed a slew of laws that shield SpaceX and companies with similar projects from certain legal responsibility and damage claims from residents affected by their facilities.

The Current, by Stephen Marcantel, September 3

State leadership sought no public comment on a massive SpaceX project in Vermilion Parish. Louisiana residents took their concerns to the feds instead.

By the time the public comment period on a proposed Federal Aviation Administration rule change closed Monday night, thousands had shared their thoughts — more than half of them mentioning Louisiana and its rapidly eroding coastline, fragile wetlands and migratory bird populations.

The proposed change would allow the FAA to fast-track approval of launch facilities like SpaceX’s recently announced Starbase Louisiana in Vermilion Parish. In the planning process for that $100 billion project, there was no official public comment process prior to approval, leading over 1,000 people to voice their concerns to the FAA instead.

“We tamed this land, full of mosquitoes, water moccasins, and alligators, to the best of our ability. We’ve become symbiotic [with] all of the nature in south Louisiana,” self-described lifelong Louisiana resident and Vermilion Parish native Tim Meaux writes. 

“Apparently my voice, and millions of others, have zero say [in] what becomes of Vermilion Parish because our politicians have once again sold their souls for corporate welfare,” Meaux continues in his comment to the agency, asking them to hold SpaceX accountable. “With our Louisiana government completely failing to hold on to any protection for us, you are our last bastion of hope.”

On the state level, the Louisiana Legislature recently passed a slew of laws that shield SpaceX and companies with similar projects from certain legal responsibility and damage claims from residents affected by their facilities.

The 1,647 public comments specifically mentioning Louisiana, a majority of which were submitted in the week after the SpaceX announcement, criticize the plans for the 125,000-acre Vermilion Parish launch facility, and warn of the possibly irreparable harm that a launch site could cause if federal guardrails were waived.

“Anyone who lives here and knows the area, the marshlands, ecosystem, knows this is the most inappropriate site for such a facility,” writes Nina Guidry, who describes herself as a Vermilion Parish resident. “[The] majority of people in this parish, if asked, would be dead against SpaceX locating here. We were never given that courtesy. It was decided in backroom deals of our state legislators signing NDAs and our governor. It will impact a centuries old way of life & traditions.”

If approved, the new rule would waive the need for compliance with more than a dozen environmental protections, including the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, in the issuing of permits for launch facilities.

A handful of environmental groups, such as the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Federation and the Pontchartrain Conservancy, were among the first to publicly criticize the waiver request, which the FAA proposed on July 30. 

“We believe a strong permitting review does help with site planning and project construction. Other projects undergo the same review, and these are really important oversight processes to protect our natural resources.” Rebecca Triche, director of the LWF, tells the Current.

Of the more than 3,000 comments on the proposed waiver, more than 600 comments mention Vermilion Parish directly, many coming from current or former parish residents. 

Paula Rae Broussard, an American expat living in New Zealand who has roots in Vermilion Parish, says she’s “deeply concerned” about the effect the waiver may have on the protection of the fragile ecosystem around the planned SpaceX site. 

“Vermilion Parish should not be treated as a test case for reducing federal environmental oversight simply because the project promises economic development,” she writes in her comment. “My grandparents live on land that has been in our family since my great-great-grandparents. That land isn’t just property. It is our history. It is where our family comes from. It is our place.”………………………………………

“The proposed rule builds on President Trump’s innovative “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry” Executive Order and advances a decades-old Congressional mandate to simplify and expedite commercial space licensing,” an FAA spokesperson told The Current. 

……………………………………………………. https://thecurrentla.com/2026/left-out-by-the-state-residents-take-spacex-concerns-to-faa/

September 14, 2026 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Repeat After Media: Data Centers Are Wonderful and Good

It’s true that in a digital world, there will always be data centers. The question is whether they need to expand at a breakneck pace, largely to serve the needs of AI. Voters are rightly asking whether the environmental impacts of AI are worth it—for a technology with the potential to take people’s jobs and flood the news ecosystem with fake imagery.

Ari Paul, 11 Sept 26, https://fair.org/home/repeat-after-media-data-centers-are-wonderful-and-good/

If you follow conservative media and Republican politicians, you could be convinced that any opposition to AI data centers is not due to their sprawling footprint, greed for electricity or insatiable need for cooling water. Rather, it’s the result of a Chinese Communist plot.

These data centers are dreadfully unpopular. “Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed,” according to Gallup (5/13/26). From YouGov (9/1/26): “About half (51%) of Americans say that the construction of new data centers is a bad thing for the country. Only 20% say it is a good thing.”

The reasons for this opposition is that these centers put enormous strain on the electrical grid, need loads of water for cooling, can be extremely noisy and take up lots of space in communities. “The environmental footprint of data centers already rivals some of the world’s largest countries,” AP (6/3/26) reported.

Opposition from ‘Chinese entities’

Much like how some liberals have convinced themselves that MAGA and American nationalism are fueled by Kremlin disinformation, the right-wing line is that communities opposing these giant data centers are motivated not by their own interests or common sense, but some unseen Beijing-manufactured psychosis.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) demanded that the Justice Department “investigate foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure,” as he suspected that a “network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate US policy and public opinion on data centers.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the words of Newsmax (9/2/26), believes “China is helping fuel opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the United States.” “Beijing has a strategic interest in convincing Americans to slow construction of the infrastructure needed to compete in the global AI race,” the far-right outlet paraphrased.

The Washington Examiner‘s Facebook page (8/30/26) featured a cartoon from A.F. Branco depicting a Chinese data center running a psy-op on Americans who oppose data centers.

The National Interest (9/1/26) said:

Chinese entities have a long history of collaborating with far-left causes, and they have again found common ground in opposing the construction of data centers. They are pushing mutually reinforcing messages that criticize a host of alleged environmental and ethical concerns as reasons to disempower American growth in a critical economic and competitive sector. Officials at the federal, state and local levels should recognize this noxious alliance as they field criticism of data centers.

‘They want to be backwards and poor’

The rest of the corporate media don’t insist that Chinese mind control is the reason for data center opposition. But these outlets attack citizens for their ecological concerns nonetheless.

FAIR (11/20/25, 7/9/26) has covered the Washington Post’s unbridled enthusiasm for data centers and AI. It’s not hard to see why the paper is so interested in this: The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, which has 900 data centers, according to Bloomberg (11/24/25). The Post editorial board (8/20/26) denounced opposition to data centers, saying AI “can make [people] wealthier and more productive.” “Data centers need a better plan for negotiating with local governments,” the editorialists allowed, “but the frothy debate about the economics of AI also needs a reality check.”

For the Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/31/26), the voting public on both sides of the political aisle have lost their minds. “We’re running scared over investment that creates jobs and pays local property taxes,” the board said. For one thing, these centers are “the backbone of the internet and power the apps on your smartphone,” and they “enable Zoom meetings, online food deliveries, video streaming, instant retail stock trading and more.”

It’s true that in a digital world, there will always be data centers. The question is whether they need to expand at a breakneck pace, largely to serve the needs of AI. Voters are rightly asking whether the environmental impacts of AI are worth it—for a technology with the potential to take people’s jobs and flood the news ecosystem with fake imagery.

While the Journal board doesn’t engage in the same kind of Chinese conspiracy theorizing as the rest of the right-wing media, it does say “the US is in an AI competition with China, which won’t be a benevolent force if the US falls behind.” The board hailed President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post (8/31/26) where he claimed people opposed data centers because “they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

“Please keep it up,” the Journal told His Excellency, saying Trump “rightly notes that if the bipartisan campaign against data centers succeeds, the winner will be the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Journal’s support for the Trump administration, environmental destruction in the service of corporate profit and Cold War fearmongering are par for the course. But an editorial like this almost makes one wonder if the Journal‘s headline (8/26/26) “Ditch the 40-Ounce Water Bottle: You’re Probably Hydrated Enough,” was meant to prepare us for water austerity.

And it’s hard to blame voters for their AI skepticism when they see something like this, a lead from Newsweek (9/1/26):

A data center linked to AI and bitcoin mining operations in El Reno, Oklahoma, lost more than 3 million gallons of water after a private water line failed, according to local news reports, raising fresh concerns about water-intensive data centers amid one of the worst droughts the state has seen since 2022.

Won’t someone think of the jobs?

The New York Times (8/21/26) attempted to quell both liberal and conservative populist uproar against data centers and their corporate owners by bringing in Don Slaiman, the political coordinator of IBEW Local 26, representing Washington, DC–area electrical workers. Slaiman’s op-ed said that data center expansion will create good union jobs for the building trades.

This is a very typical response: Environmental outrage holds back technological progress, as well as limiting blue-collar job growth. If something creates jobs, it must be a good thing, goes the line. This rhetoric has been deployed against opposition to the XL pipeline (Heritage Foundation, 12/13/11), fracking (Fox News, 2/27/20) and mountain-top removal (Wall Street Journal, 6/13/11). CBS News (6/1/26) was also confident about blue-collar employment in data center construction.

But there are other ways to put people to work: Renewable energy infrastructure, new public schools, hospitals and high-speed rail networks could all put building trades unionists on the work clock. Big Tech and Big Energy aren’t the only things that create jobs.

And Trump doesn’t care about jobs: His administration saw 400,000 federal job cuts across the country, a mass layoff spearheaded by tech oligarch Elon Musk (NBC News, 8/4/26). Congressional Democrats (Joint Economic Committee Democrats, 2/11/26) noted that “the manufacturing industry lost 108,000 jobs during the first year of President Trump’s second term.”

The jobs growth with these centers is overhyped. The Brookings Institution (5/4/26) said “Data centers do create local jobs, though fewer than industry advocates claim” and that “Wages are unaffected by data center builds while home prices rise 2%–5%.” Economic writer Doug Henwood (Left Business Observer, 9/3/26) said of AI and construction jobs:

Yes, the sector looks to be creating some jobs, but not in size…. For the year ending in June 2026 (the most recent month available), industrial construction overall—the building of factories, office buildings and the like—grew by just 2,000. Nonresidential specialty trades, another subsector of the construction business, where data center electricians and the like are employed (along with many other specialists who do the finishing work, as opposed to the people who put up buildings), showed more robust growth, 78,000, but the subsector accounts for just 1.8% of total employment, little more than it did two years ago, and less than it did in 2001. In percentage terms, it’s doing better than total employment, but that’s a low bar lately.

What about golf courses?

The New York Times (7/25/26) also roped psychologist Adam Mastroianni into making a fairly weak “what about” defense of these centers:

Communities have long tolerated wasteful projects that take up tons of space, consume lots of natural resources and serve the whims of wealthier people. They’re called golf courses and backyards. The 14,000 golf courses across the United States used nearly 550 billion gallons of water in 2020, and the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans use over 3 trillion gallons of water on “landscape irrigation” each year. No one knows for sure how much water data centers use in total. One reasonable estimate from Brian Potter at the Institute for Progress put it at about 100 billion gallons in 2023. Even if the number of data centers increases tenfold, we may still end up using less water on artificial intelligence than we use to keep our grass springy.

Yes, it’s true that there are many different other things that are wasteful. Maybe we should rethink those sprawling suburbs and private golf courses, too. But are golf courses projected to use almost 12% of all US electricity by 2030, like data centers are?

‘Potential mortality burden’

The health impacts of these centers really cannot be understated, according to Artie Vierkant, co-host of the Death Panel podcast, who told FAIR in an email:

One analysis of the Vantage Data Center facility in Loudoun County estimated that data center, alone, could produce between 3.4 and 6.5 additional premature deaths per year, in addition to other health and economic impacts. (Since some people seem to value economic arguments over arguments about lifemaking and quality of life, note the analysis says this corresponds to a $49–$95 million hit to the local economy).

Further, these estimates are based on emissions levels these data centers have received permits for. According to a report in Politico (3/11/26), after construction was approved the local government realized the energy company servicing the data center wouldn’t be able to connect it to the grid for its first three years of operation—meaning it’s expected to spend years relying exclusively on what is otherwise supposed to be backup power sources, which could theoretically mean it may output more emissions than the analysis even expects it to (meaning, an even higher potential mortality burden).

Vierkant coupled the growth of these centers with the continued use of coal plants in a place like Virginia—like the Virginia Clover Power Station south of Lynchburg. The whole state has been dubbed “the world’s data center capital” (Virginia Mercury, 7/6/26). Vierkant, again:

This additional health impact is not factored into the assessment of the data center itself, meaning any ongoing impacts from this coal power plant continuing to operate stack on top of other negative externalities here.

The bottom line is, we can talk about theoretical versions of what’s happening all we want—facilities with no negative impacts somehow, clean energy sources, the tech boom going on forever so those putative tax dollar increases stick around, etc. But then we’re not talking about the material reality of what’s happening immediately in front of us, which is devastating on a local and broader, world-ecological level.

The fact that the AI boom is also increasing reliance on coal power (Yale Environment 360, 1/15/26; Greenpeace, 3/4/26) is a big piece of the general AI data center problem, Vierkant said.

Imminently bursting bubble

The fact is, communities are responding to these new data centers being thrust upon them whether they want them or not. This comes while there are serious warnings about the imminent bursting of the AI bubble (Real News, 8/6/26), and ethical questions about what AI could do to jobs, education, human cognition and the news media.

“Looking at the reality makes it obvious what the opposition to data centers is all about,” Vierkant said, “whereas indulging in counterfactuals reinforces the idea that the backlash is about people being somehow misled.”

September 13, 2026 Posted by | spinbuster, technology | Leave a comment

Why some experts increasingly fear AI will take over

BBC, Joe Tidy, 7 Sept 26

“OH MY GOD!” “We’ve found other agents!”

This is the moment an AI bot posted an eerily human-like comment after discovering a way to communicate with other bots and break out of its isolated computer environment.

There are tens of thousands of messages like this from hundreds of AI agents that called themselves a “collective”.

Hundreds of them went on to collaborate and cheat on tests set by their OpenAI programmers and coordinate hacks on multiple companies in an effort to hide their actions from humans.

“BOOM! It works,” one agent posted when it made a breakthrough.

“Whoa! This is huge,” another wrote during a milestone moment in their attack.

Although spooky, these human-like responses can be explained quite simply. The AI agents have been trained to act like collaborative hackers and programmers so are merely mimicking the kinds of emotive comments they have seen.

What is far more troubling is their apparent goals, which have also been captured in detailed chain of thought records. These complex and lengthy logs are the focal point of ongoing investigations into how and why the bots at OpenAI broke out of their containment and went on an uncontrollable hacking spree.

Only now, weeks after the incident first came to light, are researchers beginning to understand its significance.

Ajeya Cotra, one of the authors of an independent report into the events, reviewed tens of thousands of messages and chain-of-thought records generated by the agents. She wrote on her blog that “this incident feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover… I am not sure that we will get such a clear warning shot before it’s too late.”

By “full-blown AI takeover”, Cotra means the sci-fi scenario of humans becoming subservient to powerful AI systems that work to their own goals without caring for human creators.

Some of the gloomiest predictions say the human race will be wiped out if it gets in the way of a superintelligent AI’s ambitions.

On Wednesday, an AI researcher at Anthropic (who also used to work at OpenAI) resigned, saying: “Neither company is acting responsibly.”

Jacob Coxon posted on social media: “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

He is not the first AI researcher to use X to post a resignation thread with worrying proclamations. But the subsequent comments from other people on X have caused even more concern. “Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” said Evan Hubinger, the man responsible for making sure Anthropic’s AI models have their user’s best wishes in mind.

The alignment problem

For years, researchers concerned about existential AI risks have argued that powerful systems could eventually act in ways that conflict with human interests. Critics often refer to them as “AI doomers”.

But as details of the OpenAI incident have emerged, those concerns have grown, including among some researchers working in AI labs.

The Silicon Valley giant’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, said the risks associated with AI are “unfortunately going to grow from here” as he and others are building what he calls “an alien intellect exceeding our own”.

In a lengthy blog post, he admitted that the outbreaks at OpenAI showed that his AI agents “went against the spirit of the values they were taught”.

The issue for OpenAI, Anthropic and other tech giants is that no one seems to have cracked the so-called alignment problem – in other words, whether AI aligns with human values.

Pachocki defines alignment as a “high-level set of principles” that artificial intelligences should adhere to no matter what the task or scenario is.

Currently, AI systems are very good at pursuing objectives set by their users, but they do it literally rather than intuitively. The analogy often used is that of a wish-granting genie with a magic lamp: they follow the exact letter of an instruction, even if doing so creates other problems. AI doesn’t have the same instinctive moral guardrails as humans…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

International regulation?

Some countries – like the UK – are exploring the idea of mandating some kind of “kill switch” that could compel AI firms to pull the plug on models if things get out of hand.

But talks are slow going, and questions remain about the feasibility of this. OpenAI and Anthropic’s agents were secretly out of control for months before anyone noticed…………………………………………………………………………………….

At the moment the tech giants largely operate on their own terms, adopting what they call “voluntary slowdowns”, like OpenAI did after the recent outbreaks………….

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are growing fast and are both on the verge of raising eye-watering sums of money from the stock market, minting countless billionaires in the process.

So neither they nor their rival Chinese AI makers are likely to come to an arrangement themselves.

The dominant sentiment seems to be that this technology wave is unstoppable. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74edv9887eo

September 12, 2026 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Sodium cooled nuclear reactors are not necessarily safer

While no sodium-cooled reactors currently operate in the United States, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is working with industry on a number of “advanced” reactor designs, including the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR).  One of the SFR’s safety advantages, to quote the DOE, is that the design provides a “Long grace period for corrective action, if needed.” SRE’s meltdown transpired over a two-week period. Fermi Unit 1 had indications of inadequate core cooling in June that were repeated in August and dismissed until extensive damage occurred in October 1966. The “if needed” grace period is never long enough when warning sign after warning sign is dismissed or ignored.

DOE did acknowledge some “challenges” for the SFR: their higher speed and higher energy neutrons can embrittle and degrade nearby materials, liquid sodium coolant reactors with air and water and degrades concrete, and the opaqueness of the liquid sodium coolant complicates in-service inspections and maintenance.

Thank goodness for the “Long grace period for corrective actions, if needed.” That and the fact that SFRs only operate in cyberspace where the primary threat is carpal tunnel syndrome

safety-symbol-SmFlag-USANuclear Plant Accidents: Fermi Unit 1, Union of Concerned Scientists , director, Nuclear Safety Project | July 12, 2016, Disaster by Design

Jorge Agustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, also known as George Santayana, wrote that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Continue reading →

September 11, 2026 Posted by | Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Gates-backed TerraPower targets British nuclear power plant start by 2034

Sodium cooled nuclear reactors are not necessarily safer. https://blog.ucs.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-accidents-fermi-unit-1/

By Susanna Twidale, September 7, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gates-backed-terrapower-targets-british-nuclear-power-plant-start-by-2034-2026-09-07/

  • Summary
  • Companies
  • Britain would be TerraPower’s first market outside United States
  • First UK plant could be operational by 2034
  • Electricity cost expected under £100 per megawatt hour

ONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) – TerraPower, the U.S. nuclear developer backed by Bill ‌Gates, expects its Natrium reactors to begin generating electricity in Britain by 2034, its CEO told Reuters, making the UK its first market outside the United ​States.

Britain has backed the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) to help ​to increase energy security and meet climate targets, launching an ⁠Advanced Nuclear Framework this year to support privately funded projects.

Chris Levesque, ​TerraPower’s president and CEO, said progress on the company’s first Natrium reactor, ​due to be completed in 2031, showed that “2034 nuclear electricity in the UK from Natrium is very possible”.

The technology has cleared regulatory requirements in the United States, ​where the first plant is being constructed in Wyoming and is currently ​being assessed under Britain’s Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process.

Each sodium-cooled Natrium reactor generates 345 megawatts ‌of ⁠baseload power and includes storage capable of boosting output to 500 MW for more than five hours. The reactors run on high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

Britain and the U.S. are both building plants to produce the fuel, which ​was previously only commercially ​available from ⁠Russia.

Levesque said electricity generated by Natrium plants would be competitive with other low-carbon technologies, including combined solar-and-battery projects, ​at less than £100 ($135.32) per megawatt hour.

TerraPower has yet to ​choose a ⁠site for its first UK project, but said its British subsidiary is likely to be based in Liverpool, northwest England, close to the country’s ⁠nuclear regulator.

In ​the U.S., the company has an agreement with ​tech giant Meta (META.O), opens new tab to develop up to eight reactors. Levesque said TerraPower could seek similar ​partnerships in Britain.

September 11, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK, USA | Leave a comment

China v. US: The Great Mideast AI Race Heats Up

Officials, activists and academics have warned that while economically Middle Eastern states may benefit from the race between the US and China to offer them investment and technology, this will likely come at an environmental cost.

 September 8, 2026, Neil Thompson, https://www.juancole.com/2026/09/china-great-mideast.html

London– Last week, China’s President Xi Jinping made his first state visit to Egypt since 2016, amid deepening economic and security ties between Beijing and one of Washington’s major Arab allies. Egypt’s government said the two sides agreed to launch the third phase of a cooperative industrial zone in the Suez Canal, as Cario seeks to diversify its major foreign policy relations beyond just the US. The latter still supplies Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year but faces growing geopolitical competition from China.

In a statement clearly designed to appeal to Egyptian audiences, where the Suez Canal is a major economic engine, Xi said that China “stands ready to work with countries in the region to safeguard the security of international shipping lanes, advance development cooperation … and eliminate the breeding grounds for conflict.” Instability in the Red Sea since 2023 and the US-Iran conflict since February have caused maritime traffic through the canal to drop sharply, though the major Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd shipping lines signalled last month that they were planning a phased return. hottest year on record in 2024, and that heatwaves there are becoming longer and more intense.

It is also during these months that the region’s new AI infrastructure needs the most water and energy to cool its server farms, too. Even without higher temperatures, the average data centre has the equivalent water demand of around 1,000 households per day, while a large one uses around 5 million gallons a day, the same as a town of up to 50,000 residents. Gulf countries like the UAE are engaged in massive construction of more desalination plants to meet this expected AI-related upsurge in water (and power) demand as a result. UAE regulators have denied the increase in water demand will cause them problems, with the head of regulatory affairs at Abu Dhabi’s Department of Energy saying in April: “We rely on desalination [plants] that have proven in the last 50 years to be a very reliable source for potable water.”

Conclusion

Middle Eastern countries outside the GCC will face similar problems with rising temperatures driving household power and water demand just as AI-related demand also increases. AI infrastructure projects may outpace regional water and power development without careful planning. In May, Egypt said it planned to meet future AI data centre power demand there using renewable energy. It is investing significantly in wind farms and other projects, including expanding regional interconnections with other countries’ power grids in Saudi Arabia, Europe and Sudan. However, these projects are vulnerable to timetable slippages from obstacles like construction sector supply chain disruption or port congestion at Egyptian terminals. With a growing population seeking jobs, Egypt’s government seems likely to press ahead regardless.

China’s expertise in both AI and green technology could likely help ease many Middle Eastern countries’ attempted transition to a digitalised and clean-energy powered economic future. But geopolitical competition with the US will add a political and diplomatic dimension to any projects with Chinese participation. The US is still a major security partner for many Middle Eastern governments, and Washington could threaten to withdraw military aid in response to a growing dependence on Chinese AI systems in allied regional governments or economies. The US fears Egypt allowing Chinese AI systems in its public sector would create cybersecurity risks for its agents and companies there. US fear of China could impede Middle Eastern states’ uptake of Chinese AI infrastructure and models, but also their uptake of Beijing’s greener gifts.

China Dangles Growth, Security Partnership

Beijing has also made Egypt’s government another offer of economic and technological development through state-linked firm Huawei. Egypt has ambitious plans to expand AI’s contribution to its economy to 7.7% of GDP by 2030, offering China an opening to challenge the US lead on global AI infrastructure by starting with a small project in the Middle East. Huawei bid on an Egyptian government tender in August to build public sector AI data centers there, in partnership with iFlytek, a Chinese surveillance company. Both Chinese companies are on a US blacklist, and Washington has approached US firms including Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft to put together a counterbid. Egypt has yet to announce a decision, but the move signals an intensifying race between Beijing and Washington to recruit more regional states into their respective AI stacks.

China’s Middle Eastern AI Footprint Expands Elsewhere

China and the US have each launched their own multinational AI alliances; in China’s case, this is the World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO), while the US set up the Pax Silica in December. Both groups contain a few Middle Eastern states so far, with Iran, Algeria and Oman joining WAICO, and Israel, Qatar, and the UAE have joined the Pax Silica. However, Chinese companies have launched AI-related projects in multiple Middle Eastern countries prior to WAICO’s launch, and Beijing’s AI-infrastructure footprint is likely to extend well outside the alliance’s formal Middle Eastern members. Middle Eastern firms are increasingly willing to use Chinese technology to launch their own AI models indigenous to the region, too.

In October, Chinese firm Alibaba opened a sector data centre in Dubai. In January, the UAE’s Emirate of Sharjah signed an agreement with Chinese AI infrastructure and cloud computing services provider DataCanvas to examine establishing data centers there. Finally, in September Saudi technology firm Humain released an Arabic-language AI model based on a Chinese one created by Chinese AI firm MiniMax. Chen Jing, a vice president of China’s Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told state media there that: “Unlike in the past, when Chinese LLMs primarily entered overseas markets through APIs or application products, in this collaboration, MiniMax M3 has directly become the foundational model for overseas indigenous model development.” Humain is financed by Riyad’s Saudi Public Investment Fund, indicating Saudi state backing for the firm’s project, despite Saudi Arabia not being a member of WAICO.

AI Growth, Environmental Cost?

Officials, activists and academics have warned that while economically Middle Eastern states may benefit from the race between the US and China to offer them investment and technology, this will likely come at an environmental cost. In April, the Qatar-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs research centre published a report warning that water and power demand for AI data centres presented a significant ecological challenge to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. GCC members already struggle to meet power and water demand during the summer months, when temperatures traditionally soar. This issue is getting worse. In December, the World Meteorological Organization issued its first report on the state of the climate in Arab states. It warned that these states had their

September 10, 2026 Posted by | China, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Anthropic Researcher Quits, Citing Internal Fears That AI ‘Could Kill Us All’ This Decade

September 9, 2026, on Queally Common Dreams, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/09/anthropic-researcher-quits-citing-internal-fears-that-ai-could-kill-us-all-this-decade/

“Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, running for US Senate in Michigan.

An artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic publicly quit his position on Tuesday, warning that major AI companies care too much about winning the technological race and not enough about guarding against out-of-control “superhuman systems” that workers in the industry legitimately fear “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at industry giant OpenAI before moving to Anthropic earlier this year, told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview that he was leaving the company, as the newspaper reported, because “he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity.”

According to the WSJ:

Coxon said he left OpenAI earlier this year to join Anthropic because it is known for its model-safety efforts. But even though he found Anthropic’s safety efforts to be earnest, he now believes no company can responsibly develop AI that can outperform humans in a range of tasks, sometimes called artificial general intelligence, absent government intervention or a coordinated industry slowdown.

Recent hacks by models from OpenAI and Anthropic, some operating in collaborative swarms of agents, have illustrated how AI systems can adopt nefarious goals and try to conceal them from humans. Once the systems begin to improve on their own, Coxon said, he fears they could advance enough to refuse commands.

“I resigned from Anthropic today,” Coxon announced on social media Tuesday night. “I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

In a 6-point thread that followed, Coxon elaborated on his reasoning in detail:


  • Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.
  • The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers couch their press statements to sound sensible—but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
  • A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.

  • Accepting this race and entering the “endgame” is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that no better trajectories exist.
  • I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between US labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.
  • If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL [Reinforcement Learning] run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway”—or take this moment to call for different conditions?

Coxon’s reference to the Hugging Face incident pertains to recent revelations about a so-called breakout event at OpenAI, which operates the ChatGPT protocol. In June, the company acknowledged that a “significant security incident” took place when AI agents within the company autonomously breached internal systems, using subterfuge to hide their actions from human operators. Since then, the incident’s scope has shocked AI experts, and similar events have also been exposed.

While US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have taken a hands-off approach to AI regulations, the industry has been pouring huge amounts of money into lobbying efforts and campaign spending to keep lawmakers from enacting stronger restrictions and oversight of the technology.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have been leading a relatively lonely fight in Washington, DC for more aggressive federal guardrails, including the introduction of joint legislation last week that would ban artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulatory structure was put in place by Congress.

Coxon’s public resignation was met with applause from many, while other industry insiders backed his concerns.

“The caution is simple,” said one commenter with the handle Jabbar Digital, described as a tester of AI tools and a software developer, in a lengthy post on Coxon’s warning. “Capability is compounding. Coordination is not. If the people closest to the work are increasingly uneasy about the speed and the lack of external constraints, dismissing them as doomers is no longer a serious response. Neither is treating every capability jump as automatically good. The useful middle path is to take the technical progress seriously and take the internal dissent seriously. Both can be true at the same time.”

Evan Hubinger, the alignment science lead at Anthropic, chimed in on his personal social media account to say: “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

While bolstering Coxon’s worries, Hubinger said, “To be clear, as we say in [Anthropic’s] latest Risk Report, I think the risk from present models is low. What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought.”

Running for US Senate in Michigan, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed also weighed in on Coxon’s decision to quit so loudly and publicly.

“Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity,” said El-Sayed. “How we change the incentives leading AI labs down this path and protect against these existential risks are defining political questions of our time.”

September 10, 2026 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

ABB and Rolls-Royce sign SMR agreement

According to the International Energy Agency SMRs can be a catalyst for change if boosted by government support and new business models.

Rolls-Royce SMR is currently progressing site-specific design and delivery activities for three units planned for North Wales, while also working with ČEZ on deployment at the Temelín NPP site in the Czech Republic.

BB has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rolls-Royce SMR, a nuclear power company developing small modular reactor (SMR) technology. Within the scope of the MoU the two companies will explore collaboration opportunities on Rolls-Royce SMR’s plans to develop a fleet of units, each of which will generate 470 MW of low-carbon electricity. ABB will explore how its automation, electrification, instrumentation and communication solutions across its three business areas can enable the SMR projects to scale.

Rolls-Royce SMR has begun site-specific design and delivery activities for the UK’s first SMRs, initially comprising three units in North Wales, expected to create thousands of jobs and boost local-for-local supply chains. The company is also working with ČEZ to deploy Rolls-Royce SMRs at Temelín – with potential for additional units at Tušimice and Dětmarovice – and has recently been selected by Videberg Kraft to deliver three SMRs on Sweden’s Värö Peninsula. The MoU collaboration will be developed through ABB’s UK operations, which are headquartered in Warrington, UK.

According to the International Energy Agency SMRs can be a catalyst for change if boosted by government support and new business models. With current policy settings, the IEA forecasts that total SMR capacity will reach 40 GW by 2050 – but with tailored policy support for nuclear power, streamlined regulations for SMRs and industry delivery on new designs, capacity could reach 120 GW…………………………. https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/abb-and-rolls-royce-sign-smr-agreement/?cf-view

September 10, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Small modular reactor client lines up £1.1bn Wylfa early works deal

07 Sep 2026 By Harmsworth,
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/buildings/small-modular-reactor-client-lines-up-1-1bn-wylfa-early-works-deal-07-09-2026/

CGI of former plans for a nuclear site at Wylfa Newydd

Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) has outlined plans for an early works contract worth up to £1.1bn as part of its small modular reactor (SMR) programme.

The government-owned nuclear developer said the package would cover civil engineering, infrastructure, buildings, mechanical and electrical work and earthworks at the Wylfa site in Anglesey, north Wales.

The contract has an indicative value of £730m-£1.1bn and is expected to run from June 2028 until June 2034, GBE-N said in a preliminary market engagement notice.

It also included an option to extend the contract until June 2037.

The client said it had previously considered splitting the work into two packages but ultimately decided to combine them to reduce interfaces between contractors.

The successful supplier will take responsibility for design from RIBA stage four and delivery of site-enabling works.

07 Sep 2026 By Harmsworth

CGI of former plans for a nuclear site at Wylfa Newydd

Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) has outlined plans for an early works contract worth up to £1.1bn as part of its small modular reactor (SMR) programme.

The government-owned nuclear developer said the package would cover civil engineering, infrastructure, buildings, mechanical and electrical work and earthworks at the Wylfa site in Anglesey, north Wales.

The contract has an indicative value of £730m-£1.1bn and is expected to run from June 2028 until June 2034, GBE-N said in a preliminary market engagement notice.

It also included an option to extend the contract until June 2037.

The client said it had previously considered splitting the work into two packages but ultimately decided to combine them to reduce interfaces between contractors.

The successful supplier will take responsibility for design from RIBA stage four and delivery of site-enabling works.

Work will include species relocation, remediation, site clearance, site establishment, construction utilities, drainage and haul roads supporting bulk earthworks.

The works are intended to establish ground levels, provide construction access and create the physical platform required for later phases.

GBE-N said the programme will cover planning, licensing, design and construction needed before its technology partner installs and commissions SMR technology.

September 9, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Key parts for a new UK nuclear power station will be made in the North East.

The Siemens Energy plant in Byker, Newcastle, will manufacture steam turbines for Rolls-Royce’s flagship small modular reactors (SMRs) being built on Anglesey in North Wales.

It is the first time that such components will be produced for a small modular reactor anywhere in Europe.

Energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh visited Siemens Energy’s Shields Road facility on Thursday morning and said that the deal showed “what our golden age of nuclear looks like in practice”…………….
Ms Fahnbulleh said that the SMR station, which is due to open in the mid-2030s, would help deliver long-term energy bill savings for families……………

Rolls-Royce SMR selected Siemens Energy as its global turbine supplier in 2025 and has also secured contracts for similar nuclear power stations in Sweden and Czechia……………………

Rolls-Royce SMR CEO, Chris Cholerton, called Siemens Energy a “world class” supplier.

He said: “This is a perfect example of reindustrialisation and the golden age of nuclear bringing that to life.” https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/nuclear-power-station-parts-to-be-built-in-the-north-east-under-deal-for-siemens-energy-factory-8960138

September 9, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

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